Since then, if you’ve been lurking on social media much, you’ll have noticed various Christians, Republicans and alt-right sympathizers claiming that this was somehow the fault of “leftists.” At the very least, that it’s equally the fault of leftists. More probably, that leftists and “libtards” have encouraged violence against the right and specifically against white men, and the right was forced to respond in kind. Or, alternately, that leftists dressed up like Nazis and started the whole thing. Antifa, specifically. That Antifa was paid to stir up hatred against white dudes by pretending they were actually racist white dudes.

This is the kind of propaganda and blame-shifting that irks me beyond measure. Really quick: I’ve been invited to Antifa counter-protests of white supremacist functions hundreds of miles from where I live. It was the opposite of an elaborate plot to screw over white supremacists: just being present, if you wanted to be, was the goal. It was not well-publicized; anti-facist protesters are wary of agent provocateurs out to give them a bad rap. There was no offer of payment, no mention of “special busses” that would get me there. If I had gone, I would have driven and lodged myself. And of course, the Antifa counter-protests I was invited to did not make headlines. Nobody was hurt, so nobody cared.

As far as I can figure, it’s kind of a moot point, though. Video and still footage from Charlottesville shows garden-variety nonviolent counter-protestors being attacked unprovoked (unless you consider standing in a street provocation) by white men wearing homemade riot gear: helmets, shields, batons.

The lily-white, lily-livered alt-right believes that affirmative action, for example, which seeks to rectify centuries of policy designed to ensure that whites alone got ahead in life, somehow is “racism” that threatens their very existence. Or at least that’s what they say. It seems difficult to imagine that they’re serious, given that their government is almost entirely white (and male) and white men are still in charge of most big companies in this country. White men have yet to experience anything remotely like what they perpetuated, and continue to perpetuate, on minority populations in this country.

In the name of striking back against leftists and asserting their rights, alt-right individuals have attacked many, in real life, sometimes with lethal consequences. They post memes hoping for a liberal uprising that will allow them to “massacre” the left.

What shocks me most about this is not that it’s happening. This country was founded on the back of violent racism (killing off one people group and using the enslavement of another to build its infrastructure) and it’s never completely stopped. What shocks me is how many evangelicals, wooed by Brietbart and Fox News, parrot white supremacist and alt-right propaganda without even realizing it.

The vilification of the left, of transgender people, of gays, of Black Lives Matter, is shared by many evangelicals who maintain that racism is wrong, but claim that Black Lives Matter are the real racists, so let’s focus on their sins rather than our own.

Although I have seen many Christians protest racism — some were at the counter-protest in Charlottesville — I have yet to see any truly conservative evangelicals call out the American church’s historical ties to white supremacy, and how the alt-right is currently influencing conservative evangelicalism to the detriment of the country. Instead, they focus on bizarre made-up crises, like gay frogs. Or the claim that Christians are “taking fashion tips from sodomites” and that what is required in response is a kind of cultivated inattention to detail, because that’s what masculinity is all about.

Of course, “taking fashion tips from sodomites” isn’t what’s plaguing the church. Being “overly feminized” isn’t what made Mars Hills and nouveau patriarchs popular among American Christians. That’s certainly not what spurred evangelicals to elect Donald Trump, a serial liar, cheater and spurner of everything Jesus stood for, from care of the poor to humility. Evangelicals rallied behind Trump not because they’d grown fond of his meticulous gay-boy good looks; if anything, his shoddy appearance seemed reassuring. His combover is as poorly-coiffed as your Baptist grandfather’s; his self-tanner looks like it was purchased at Walmart.

A majority of evangelicals rallied behind Trump because he promised them their talking points. Abortion should be illegal. Muslims are dangerous. Non-English-speaking immigrants might be rapists. Trans people are losers. If the white patriarchy falls, then the world will be chaos. Trump appealed to a carefully-cultivated set of fears that have nothing to do with Christianity per se, and everything to do with the way American Christianity is leveraged by politicians.

What’s plaguing the modern conservative church, what’s driving it into the arms of those whose words and actions are diametrically opposed to those of Christ, isn’t “taking fashion tips from sodomites.” Aside from those who emulate alt-right bleach freak Milo Yiannopoulos, I can’t say I know any conservative Christians who would be confused with someone participating in a gay pride parade. What’s damning the modern church isn’t “pink hair” and it isn’t “feminization.” It’s the church’s temptation towards a certain reaction to these things; the idea that in the name of resisting the “feminization” of America, it’s now OK to behave like the worst kind of masculine-man there is. A womanizing, lying millionaire who worships the almighty dollar is nothing like Christ, but he is a lot like the pastors of the churches railing against “feminization.” He is a lot like the stereotypical in-charge capitalist man, glaring flaws and all. Arrogant, rapey, rich through allegedly nefarious means, unfaithful, bad at language, self-aggrandizing, in love with golf, fat, old, white.

If you’re convinced that the biggest problem with America is that men are getting too comfortable acting like women, and that whites dudes are in danger of losing their spot at the top of the food chain, then a guy like that might seem like the answer to your problems.

I would like to report that I have hereby repented of the sin of hurting you. I would also like to report that it is my duty as a husband to insist that we remain together. You see, because I have repented, Christian doctrine demands that you to come back to me now. You may ask how I am so quick to change so completely, but that’s the beauty of the gospel. You just need to say “I’m sorry” and suddenly you’re no longer beset with the sin of anger or violence. And if you are angry, it is righteousness, for God also gets angry and violent sometimes when his people stray… just like wayward wives do.

You may notice that I don’t act any different than I did before. This is true, but it’s not the point. It’s not that I’ve ceased to be controlling and domineering and unhelpful, you see. It’s that I’ve ceased to be controlling and domineering and unhelpful on my own. Now, I get to control you by telling you that my demands are not my will, they’re God’s will. It’s God’s will that you do all the dishes every night no matter how exhausted you are. It’s God’s will that you maintain a sweet countenance when I yell at you. It’s God’s will that you grant me sexual favors whenever I demand them. This is what God meant when he said “the husband is the head of the wife.” I might not be perfect, but I’m still your boss, my dear. Also, I’m not controlling because I’m an asshole; I’m controlling because I’m a normal man, and all normal men act just like me. If feminists tell you that Christian doctrine or sanity doesn’t have to lead to this particular life, they’re lying. Remember: according to my doctrine — the correct doctrine — you’re already equal in every way that counts. When you die after a miserable life of being my suffering servant, you’ll get to go to heaven just as much as me, your earthly dictator.

Remember: if you don’t obey me, you’re going to hell. Sure, things might suck a little bit for you right now, but how much worse would hell be?

This is Jonadab, Prince Amnon’s confidant. I am happy to report that Amnon is repentant and has accepted the gospel. Ammon really nailed himself over this stuff to me, so please accept him back into the fold and remember: I’m still a great guy even though I’m friends with men like Ammon. Why? Because I’m only friends with them to make sure they confess their sins, no matter how abrasive or “victim-blaming” I might sound to the feminists and the uninitiated. In case you missed it, here’s a transcript of Ammon’s public confession just to prove how much he’s seen the error of his ways:

Hi, I’m Amnon, and I’m a pretty average guy with average guy struggles. Sure, I struggle with lust sometimes. Doesn’t everyone?

People get a little weird because the lust thing was for my own sister Tamar. But remember, everyone: she was my half-sister. Our forefather Abraham married his half-sister and our entire lineage was blessed by God from the union. No big deal, really, having a crush on your half-sister. We need to remember that God’s ways are not always our ways.

From my understanding of biblical modesty requirements, in fact, it stands to reason that I would have a crush on Tamar. I can see a lot of her. She’s not always super-modest with herself in the confines of her own home. Sure, she wears courtly robes like the rest of my sisters most of the time, but she doesn’t veil herself like girls do for strangers. Occasionally I spot her in her nightgown, down the hallway, looking all supple and nubile. I’m pretty sure she does this on purpose, and if she doesn’t, it’s stupid of her to let herself be seen like that. Almost like she’s asking for it. I mean, I would never say she was asking for it, because I’m a gentleman and a prince, but let’s be honest: a girl can get raped and also be at fault. Maybe she was only at fault 5% or even 1%, but in God’s eyes a little sin, like immodesty, is just as damning to your soul as a big sin.

Technically, her dad is also at fault for telling her to hang out with me alone in my bedroom. What did he expect would happen if he left a young man and woman without fatherly supervision? Everyone, even his devoted servants, left us alone and allowed it to transpire, so they’re maybe 10% at fault each. Our house has over ten inhabitants, though, so that makes the math tricky. Basically, what you should conclude from this is that I’m a really upstanding guy for taking the blame at all. I even shed a few tears to our dad about how sorry I am, and I recited a lot of scripture to extra-prove it.

I must confess another thing, too. My buddy Jonadab is a real alpha, almost as much of an alpha as my dad when it comes to women. One afternoon Jonadab said to me: I can see you’re sick over the fact that you can’t get any from this fine chica Tamar who keeps playing hard to get. So listen, bro, all you gotta do is make up an excuse to get her alone, and if she plays along, you know she wants it too, even if she says “no.” No means yes, and it’s just the natural order of things that men colonize women. Every woman dreams of being raped if she’s not getting taken in hand by her proper covenant head, because total submission is an erotic necessity. And if she sits in your bedchamber and feeds you by hand as you recline in bed alone with her — low and lilting voice, fingers brushing your lips, “accidentally” flashing a little cleavage or elbow as she leans over you — you know what that means.

It means she’s tacitly agreeing on the propriety of getting raped. What else could she possibly expect would happen in that situation?

Obviously, I’m only quoting here. You guys, I am so very sorry that I listened to the counsel of a master ladykiller.

You guys, take my repentance to heart and please don’t fall into the same trap as me. If we’re looking at this from a proper gender and family perspective, it could have happened to anyone. It all started out with a normal desire to be closer to my family. You know that sisters are supposed to take care of their brothers. That’s just how it is, how God designed it. Especially when your father is off starting wars all the time and expanding his kingdom, amusing himself with new wives. God gave men sisters to fulfill the need for feminine companionship so you don’t have to do things like take lots of wives. Someone should tell that to my dad.

And you know that sisters are supposed to forgive their brothers if their brothers do anything to hurt them. Especially when it’s partly the sister’s fault the brothers hurt them. And especially when the brothers have a good reason to get a little confused telling right from wrong because their dads are so heavily into ministry and taking dominion of the region.

Here’s the deal: I already got in trouble with my dad about it. My dad was mad. So I don’t know why it’s anyone’s business anymore now that I’ve repented and you’ve all witnessed it. My dad gave me a real talking-to. We even met more than once about it. I confessed my sins to him and my dad called my sister in and asked her to forgive me. She’s a good sister so she said yes. We were immediately restored to fellowship, although she was still sulky and would only hang out with our bro Absalom, not me.

According to the law, I’m supposed to marry her because I raped her, but she’s so sanctimonious about it that it really turns me off. Sort of kills the vibe when she acts all dutiful and wounded. Wives are supposed to be way more pleasant about submission. Smile and act complimentary. You can’t blame me for not wanting to be married to someone who just grins and bears it. Or who cries and peppers her hair with ashes, God forbid. Our dad should teach her more about maintaining a sweet, forgiving, feminine demeanor.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean much if the person forgiving you doesn’t immediately act exactly how you want. And I want her to act supple and nubile and innocent and nightgown-y all the time. If she can’t do that, it’s her own darn fault I don’t want to marry her.

Blessings on my sister Tamar. Let’s all pray that she learns how to act more feminine, shall we?

Jonadab’s note:

Amnon isn’t quite accurate in how he portrays me in this account, but I think we can forgive him that. Let it be known that all of my counsel to Ammon was purely theoretical, a commentary on the nature of gender. And yes, let’s all pray for poor Tamar.

However, I’d like to point out that Amnon is being a little too hard on himself. The law states that if a woman is in a city and claimed rape, and nobody heard her scream, she should not be treated as if she was raped. Nobody heard Tamar scream for help — she seemed to turn “willing” pretty quick. In fact, Ammon himself had to eject her from his quarters for being too clingy. Do real rape victims immediately insist on marrying the man who just raped them? Or is this so-called “rape” merely a seduction technique? It all sounds very suspicious, wouldn’t you say?

There are two sides to every story, and women can’t be expected to be believed just because they say they’re victims.

This is why I have developed my patent-pending five-point technique for determining if women are lying about sexual harassment, or if it’s actually the men who allegedly “hurt” them who are lying. Compare and contrast:

Who is more open to hearing my wisdom? A contrite heart will be teachable.

Who confesses their sin the most, without passing blame to the other party or getting hysterical?

Who is the most joyful? A truly repentant soul, when presented with the good news of the gospel, will be initially sorrowful over their sin, however “small” it is, and then overjoyed upon hearing they are forgiven.

Who (or whose parent) has already donated the most money and/or time to my Ministry of Truth?

Who uses the most amount of telling catchphrases revealing the unresolved sins of envy, bitterness, and pride, such as “my older brother” (instead of merely “my brother”) or “my heart hurts” (instead of “my heart is desperately wicked”)?

Maybe it’s the mid-January slump where people are most likely statistically to commit suicide, but in the past six days, I’ve learned that five of my friends have been date-raped and that a sixth friend, whom I already knew was raped years ago, had been raped again recently. Nobody reported any of it. Additional women voiced that they felt shades of this in their marriages; Christian marriages to Christian husbands. Marriages they have been encouraged to stay in by the pastors of their church.

I doubt the pastors themselves have experienced anything close to sexual coercion sanctioned by their larger culture and microculture. Of course these men, and many more like them, say that rape is wrong; they also may refuse to call anything rape unless the woman is pretty much dead from fighting back so hard the man was obliged to beat her up first. A couple of bruises don’t count. “No” doesn’t count either unless someone else heard you yell it.

Oddly, the absence of a screaming tantrum is not considered a sexual invitation in any other situation. As a guy, you would probably never feel obliged to tell the stranger next to you in a dark theater: “by the way, just in case you feel like groping me while this movie is playing, please don’t, and anyway I have installed razor blades in my jock strap.” But in more private man-on-woman situations? No provable screaming tantrum, no rape.

All of this perpetuates an attitude that allows for rape with literally zero consequence. Secret, serial rapists are entitled assholes who operate in the shades of gray created by the idea that women should be polite and “submissive” to what men want, even if men are not polite or “submissive” to what women want. And the more your culture believes this, the more date-rape tends to get spun as something other than a violation and more like an inevitability of the woman doing something less than perfectly.

Even if patriarchal types do acknowledge that something happened, it’s usually accompanied by annoyance that it hasn’t already been resolved. It happened last week, or last year, or a decade ago. For those who did it, it’s in the past. But for those it happened to, it’s now. Every single day may bring flashbacks. Injuries never heal if you continuously demand things from the broken limb, and even if an injury is cared for in the most healthy way possible, there’s often a scar; a spot on the skin that doesn’t stretch the same way uninjured skin does.

If my friends are any indication, date-rape is not a rarity; it is a reoccurring problem. And if you don’t understand it, try to step inside a compiled average of the internal and external struggle my friends went through. Or don’t, if you’re adverse.

In the skin

You don’t know how confused you’ll be when you say no

When you move his hands ten times, twenty times,

And he laughs it off, contradicts you, tells you how much you’ll like it,

So you laugh a little too, break the tension nervously

Try to stop the slow creep forward as he gets further and further inside your clothes

With every trick that occurs to you: with a joke, with a wriggle, with more words.

Then silence so he doesn’t get angry.

You can’t scream; that would be ridiculous. You share too many friends, he bought you dinner, you kissed him too when your lips first touched.

What a hostile private thing will feel like in your fist when you try to push it away

Hands around your throat and crowded into your jaw

Women want dominance, women want a real man who takes what he wants

You don’t know when you’ll give up and decide it’s your fault

You got yourself in this situation, why were you so stupid

Maybe if you tell yourself it’s Ok it won’t feel like this

How is this happening

It isn’t happening

You don’t know how he’ll laugh when you claw his smug face

And call you a feisty little kitten

Tell you it builds character that you bleed

I’m sorry that I hurt you, he says, with a smile

But you’re tough, you’ll get over it

You want him to die, and you want to die too.

You have never hated anyone like this. Anything like this.

You go into the bathroom and vomit because the smell of his raw fluid inside you is like poison.

You are so tired, so…

So…

Two tracks play in your head, competing for airtime. One: You got yourself into this, you accepted his invitation, you kissed him, you should just lie down and try to sleep. You told him he was handsome. You told him you were interested. He was so kind. He listened so well. He heard you, you felt seen by him. Did you really disappear, that he stopped listening so completely?

Two, slamming into the other and settling over you like a lead sarcophagus: You are a piece of human trash, diseased from his seed, diseased from your own inability to stop him. Shame on you for not stopping him. No one will date you now. You can’t tell your mom, your best friend. It would kill them. They would look at you differently. What to do? What to do?

The next day, you go to the hospital. It’s too late for a rape kit. You’ve showered, you’ve brushed your teeth, you’ve gotten him off you. They ask you if you’re Ok, and you’re not Ok. You can’t handle their questions, the bright lights, the exam, so you leave. He was inside your skin and you don’t want anyone inside your skin again, not even a doctor.

Why are you so stupid? Why do you always do the wrong thing? What the hell is wrong with you?

Well: it’s Ok, you’ll get over it. Something good will come of it. Don’t be upset. Think positive thoughts. Too much pain if you do anything else.

I lay awake last night wondering why I felt so afraid. An aging orange caricature, a would-be media star screaming dissonant sound bites and superlatives, has launched himself to the highest political office in the world. What could possibly go wrong?

I’m afraid for myself, for the wandering hands of every man emboldened by this self-styled pussy-grabber. In crowded spaces, women know the lingering touch of the males who feel entitled to run their hands wherever they fall: the faux-polite “I’m behind you” sweep across the lower back or shoulders, the “accidental” ass-grab, the “you’re just so pretty” ass-grab, the “don’t worry about it, you’re wearing leggings” ass-grab, the “you can’t be offended because I’m a little buzzed” ass-grab. I’m afraid for my friends, for my nieces, for the young girls growing up in this world. I’m afraid because in those situations, I turn around, angry, ready to punch someone in the face, and I meet a crowd — no single person to chastise, only the crowd of men who might have done it. And how can you fight a crowd? How can you fight a nation of men who gleefully emulate the guy at the top crowing that his position, his wealth, his status, allow him to do whatever he wants to whichever woman he chooses?

I’m afraid for the land, the bones of the country, for the seams holding us together and giving us clean water, clean air. I’m worried that our public lands will be handed over the highest bidder, our national forests razed, our waters polluted, our earth mined for oil and ore until houses collapse and the air grows unbreathable. I walked through the quiet Austin neighborhoods this morning and leaned into a domesticated oak, and my heart ached. What would we be without our wilderness, without the trees pumping water inland to our fields, to our herds and the wild animals of the forest? Where would we be without clean water to drink? And will the powers that be realize the dangers before we’ve killed our tenuous ecosystems, killed the plants, the animals, and finally ourselves?

I’m afraid for my brothers and sisters of different ethnic backgrounds, especially those fighting on the forefront of keeping their land from being harmed. I’m afraid to see them unarmed in the face of armorment, see them go up against a system where they cannot win. Peaceful protest will land them in jail, and armed revolt would be worse.

I’m afraid for what this means for international diplomacy. For trade and maintaining the peace. My job hinges on international and cultural understanding; the market-driven rather than political kind. The market is always affected by politics, however. Nationalism is bad for the economy, and I’m worried now to see the Dow plunge, the markets panic. To see nations begin to shut themselves off, suspicious of a people who would elect such a uniquely unqualified candidate.

I’m afraid as a journalist. This man’s supporters have issued death threats to journalists; the man himself has threatened the entire First Amendment of our Constitution. I’m afraid for anyone who does not think exactly like this man, whose creed, color or language sets them apart. And I’m afraid for those who are exactly like him. This is perhaps the most dangerous position: the position of complacency and safety — even of victory — where so many others are threatened.

And perhaps these fears will not come to pass. Perhaps the people of the United States will rise above the man they’ve chosen to lead them. Perhaps his words will not define us. Perhaps his narcissism will be curbed and directed by more seasoned individuals. But you will forgive me for my sleepless night, for pressing my cheek into the oak this morning and wanting to cry.

I’ve been in the process of moving, which means downsizing, sorting through old boxes, and (in what I considered a stroke of genius) setting up a roomful of stuff to give away and hosting a party to minimize what I haul to Goodwill. If I give my friends enough wine, undoubtedly they will be persuaded to appreciate my junk.

It was in unpacking a box of books that has sat around for years that I came across my old copy of Her Hand in Marriage by Doug Wilson. I remember reading it maybe a decade ago or more and not being totally repulsed by it, in spite of the fact that I quietly disagreed with statements like “Sons are trained for independence, whereas daughters are trained to pass from one state of dependence to another.”

Actually, I remember being heartened by a couple of passages. So I skimmed through the book to find them, and there they were. Doug’s assertion that according to Mosaic law, the price of immorality falls on the man rather than the woman. I remember thinking ten years ago, huh, that’s an interesting take on things.

But the context of this assertion is appalling on closer reading, and something clicked. It all made sense. Many people have asked the question, as I have: why does Doug keep harping on the supposed (and fictional) “secret courtship” in the Jamin Wight abuse case? Why does he consider this relevant to modern law on consent? Why does he put so much emphasis on, you know, forgiving the poor sinning bastard and making sure that he isn’t punished too much?

The answer: because, first of all, he’s basing his teachings on modern courtship on laws in which women are stoned on their father’s doorsteps for not being virgins. The burden of maintaining the woman’s virginity lay on the father, says Doug. And it still does.

Because, second of all, Doug is teaching sexual mores from an ancient law requiring women to marry their rapists. Because Doug is somehow claiming that this law means “in a biblical society, the price of immorality was high, on fell on the man.”

On page 54 of the book, Doug quotes Deut. 22:28-29, the law saying that raped women have to marry their rapists, and that the rapists need to pay for them like they’re virgins. Doug doesn’t interpret this passage inaccurately and try to argue away the rape: he says in cases of “seduction and rape, such a bride-price is mandatory.” He points out that a woman’s virginity was valuable, monetarily speaking, and that if a virgin got raped in Old Testament times, then her rapist had to pay her bride-price, and a pretty good one at that. In fact, maybe a higher one than he would have had to pay in other circumstances! This is what Doug Wilson is referring to when he says that the burden of “immorality” is on men. There are two wildly bizarre twists of logic in this statement. First, that rape = “immorality,” (a word used to describe consensual fornication) and second, that paying a generous dowry (with or without marrying the woman you rape) is somehow a higher price than, you know, being raped and then being forced to marry your rapist.

Why would Doug largely ignore modern laws on consent when he talks about Jamin Wight’s abuse? Why would he write a letter to the judge blaming Natalie’s parents for not somehow preventing this? Why would he talk as if seducing/raping a 14-year-old is akin to a romantic relationship? It’s all in his book on courtship. In Mosaic law, which is what Doug’s book on courtship focuses on, consent didn’t factor in to sex-related punishments except in one case: if the girl was betrothed or married and someone heard her scream for help and then made this known, then she didn’t get executed for adultery.

The punishment for a single girl having a roll in the hay with her boyfriend: her dad could require they get married and that the guy pay her bride-price.

The punishment for rape, if it’s a single girl getting raped: her dad could require they get married and that the guy pay her bride-price.

What’s at play here? The girl’s value, aka her virginity. Her being forced or not forced is not a factor in the punishment. This was pretty consistent with other bronze-age ideas about women, maintaining a clear line of progeny and so on, which is why other religious texts adopted similar laws that are still in effect.

Doug has the gall to assert that according to these bronze-age laws, men and women are treated equally: that men are expected to remain physically as pure as women are. However, this is not remotely true and Doug doesn’t even try to make a case for it. There’s no equivalent law to the one he cites where if a woman marries a man and thinks he’s not a virgin like he said he was, she gets to call his parents to task and demand that they prove he’d never had sex before. “Bring out the journals where you did a room check every night! Give me the sworn affidavits from all the village girls and the visiting prostitutes! Where’s the doctor’s note saying he’s free of VD?” And if they can’t prove this, that he gets stones hurled at him on his dad’s doorstep until he dies. Men’s virginity comes up as an issue in Mosaic law exactly never. It’s not even mentioned. Do men get capital punishment for adultery? Yes, if the adultery is that they’re sleeping with a married or betrothed woman (see Deut. 22: 22-24). Do men get killed for adultery if the woman is single and it’s the dude who’s married? It’s not even addressed, so no. Adultery for married-men-only didn’t exist, because in the event of extramarital sex with a single girl, the already-married man potentially got to marry again regardless of whether or not he forced her. Polygamy to the rescue.

So, again: what’s at play here? The girl’s value, based entirely on her virginity.

What’s at play in Doug’s hissy fits over the Greenfields “not protecting” Natalie? her value, based on her virginity. It had nothing to do with her trauma, since Doug has never acknowledged there was any. It used to be said in Christ Church circles back in the day that the Greenfields were a constellation of shining stars: all beautiful, statuesque, admired. Ben Greenfield had ambitions towards national fame; some of the others did as well. There were a few families like that, and it was well-known who they were.

Having virtuous, beautiful women in his congregation is a major way Doug Wilson measures his pastoral acumen — you can tell by how often he mentions that submissive women under godly authority are beautiful, by how he brags about what the women in his congregation look like — and conversely, how ugly all the “small-breasted-biddies” and “lumberjack dykes” out there in non-Christian society are. You can tell by how he claims that non-Christ Church people favorably compare the women in his congregation to other women elsewhere.

When Jamin Wight abused Natalie, Natalie was whispered about in Christ Church — I know because I heard the whispers. She’d had sex. She was not a good girl. She was no longer a star in the Christ Church constellation. She was no longer a face and a body that Doug Wilson could comfortably pad his congregation with, could wallpaper the background with when visiting dignitaries paid him court.

Her value was in her virginity. Her consent or non-consent was of secondary, if any, importance. That’s why Doug responded the way he did to Jamin’s crimes. His theology of sexual ethics, drug straight from Deuteronomy 22 and explained over the course of 100 pages.

Doug asks his readers to consider the painful outcomes of not espousing the model he sets up in this book — presumably, divorce, maybe single motherhood or something like that. But let’s consider the painful price to the many, many people who have tried to follow his teachings and have gotten a raw deal instead. Even some of the ones who don’t think they have — I keep hearing about some women (though certainly not all of them) in his denomination who literally say of married sex, “women don’t like it, just lie there and pray for it to be over quickly.” I keep reading smothered evidence of abuse on CREC fronts that have yet to become public; I keep reading essays and comments from people who have been deeply wounded by Doug’s teachings.

Doug Wilson’s fruit is not how many beautiful, talented, chaste women he has sitting in the Logos Fieldhouse on any given Sunday. It’s what they say about him when they’re no longer bound by family, job, community or the threat of hell.

On this Valentine’s Day, I hope the single women do not feel like they are less than — particularly where safety is involved.

Over a decade ago, back when I worked at a college newspaper, all the editors had a meeting to discuss the way we were going to cover an alleged sexual assault case. The paper had initially reported it by naming the supposed rapist and leaving the supposed victim unnamed, as is standard procedure for sexual assault cases. However, there appeared to be some serious flaws in the story, and it was looking like a probable, though not absolute, false accusation. Honestly, I don’t remember the precise details of the case, but the question on the table was, in reporting these newest developments, if we named her or not. The guy writing the story really wanted to. He argued his case, and I could see his point: it wasn’t fair that he should be named as a possible rapist if she wasn’t getting named as a possible liar. We put it to a vote. The vote was tied. I was the last to vote, because, apparently, I was the most torn.

In the end, I voted against naming her. I couldn’t really explain why. At that point, I was fairly conservative (never kissed anyone, never been drunk, voted Republican) and would not have called myself a feminist.

I know why now. Because teaching her a lesson in public humiliation seemed far less important than preserving a code of ethics designed to keep victims of sexual assault safe.

In grad school, I joined up with a few people to start a writer’s group. One essay really stuck with me. A friend of mine was writing about how he had been falsely accused of touching his stepsister inappropriately, although apparently the accusations evaporated before things progressed too far. He wrote about his sexual paranoia following this, about how years afterwards he would repeatedly ask his girlfriend, to her great annoyance, “is this Ok, are you sure you want to do this?” He wrote about how another woman he knew had been raped, but didn’t want to report it because she was afraid. He wrote about his turmoil over this. How, he asked, do you make it safe enough for women to report rape in a culture where already a girl can ruin a boy’s life merely by saying “he touched me”?

This question bothered me because it did not seem to have a very good answer. Or, potentially, any answer.

This question took on new shape as my female friends began to tell me, in strange bare-souled moments, about things that had happened to them. One conservative girl told me about how, as a young teenager, she fell asleep in a friend’s den and awoke to find an older man on top of her, about how she tried to scream, about how much it hurt. About how she told no one, because she’d had one beer and thus thought it was her fault. About how her whole life changed for the worse after, and her frustrated parents assumed it was hormonal. Another conservative girl told me about an attempted rape she’d fought off, terrified and also silent. She didn’t accuse the guy either. Meanwhile, I was traveling the world, developing tactics to try to keep men like this at bay, dressing in ugly clothing, swearing like a sailor at them in a loud voice, physically pushing one man at a bus stop off of me. It worked, but none of them got in trouble, and the ugly dressing did not stop the ugly behavior. I considered myself lucky that nothing worse happened, and, indeed, the worst things were always done closer to home by people I knew and trusted — and they got away with it too.

At this point, extrapolating based on the stories of women I know and trust, I’d guess that maybe one in five women reports sexual assault to police. And that’s basically just the beginning of their journey towards justice. Obviously, my sample size is limited. But national statistics are only slightly better. In certain religious and cultural environments, those statistics can actually be much worse.

Women have a lot to lose by saying they were raped, even if it’s true and they can prove it — which in itself can be difficult, short of witnesses (which is unlikely) or DNA evidence, which needs to be gathered immediately and can be itself invasive and potentially traumatizing. Women similarly have a lot to lose by saying they were abused by domestic partners — even apart from the financial repercussions, it’s humiliating to admit that you married someone who mistreats you; it makes you look like a silly moron. It’s endlessly frustrating to try to convince people that a man who parades himself around like a saint is anything but. In domestic violence as well as rape cases, the victim is nearly always prodded by somebody about their bad choices, raked over the coals for this skirt or that turn of phrase. You provoked him. Of course we’re not excusing him, if in fact you are telling the truth, which you haven’t proven yet, but you really need to be focusing on your own sins.

Oftentimes, when a woman comes to her conservative community and says, “my husband is hurting me” or “this man coerced me into sex,” she’s told that, well, the leadership can’t pick sides, and if she was really telling the truth, she would have already done X, Y or Z differently. “Many women lie about this and play the victim,” say the leaders of these conservative communities sagely, “so we can’t just believe what you tell us.” So, feeling as if she’s been accused of lying and as if she has nowhere to turn, this woman will go home to her abusive husband, or back to her church-run school or workplace where her rapist hangs out. She’s reached out and gotten nothing. By refusing to pick sides, the leaders have picked sides. They’ve chosen not to believe her and not to take her concern seriously.

The other women who see this take note, and may not even take the first step of trying to get help.

Nowhere is this more evident than when someone like Doug Wilson says that women are tacitly agreeing on the propriety of rape by shrugging off male protection. Now, it is often this very “male protection” that does the damage — which Doug knows, as he is familiar with husbands and fathers in his congregation who have acted in physically or sexually violent ways (and not just the ones who have made it out into the news, clearly). Doug himself is not acting as a larger “male protector” and encouraging these women to leave their fathers/husbands for the protection of his home — not if the men are loyal to Doug.

Notice also that Doug discusses the “propriety of rape,” specifically, although nobody “tacitly” agrees on the “propriety” of being raped by doing or not doing anything. In retrospect, Doug has tried to paint this as a warning sign: if women go wandering around in dark alleys without a manly man around to protect them, they shouldn’t be surprised if someone jumps out and grabs them from behind. But this is not actually what the sentence he wrote means.

Statistically, if you attend Christ Church and particularly if you board Wilson’s seminary or college students, your children have a high-ish likelihood of being molested or otherwise preyed on by adult men in completely inappropriate ways. Wilson knows this is true, because, as he’s so fond of saying, he “covers sin up for a living.” But even given this statistical chance of molestation, it would not be true if I claimed “people who attend Christ Church tacitly agree on the propriety of having their children raped.” See the difference now? Nobody “tacitly” agrees on the “propriety” of being raped by failing to do something, whether you fail to leave a church hosting known rapists or you fail to walk around with a man on your arm at all times.

But making statements such as these leads to all sorts of problematic conclusions. If you honestly believe that a woman who fails to wear appropriate clothing or find an appropriate chaperone is “tacitly” asking to be raped, then you also believe it’s partly her fault if a man picks up on this “tacit” communication and acts accordingly.

Let’s put this another way. By mouthing off in public, Doug Wilson tacitly agrees on the propriety of him getting murdered. This is how I know:

Doug has stated that women who aren’t protected by men are tacitly agreeing on the propriety of being raped. Thus, he believes doing or not doing something that contributes to X = agreeing, tacitly or otherwise, that X will or should occur.

Doug lives in a world where guns are freely available and where many of his friends and detractors are sure to own them.

Doug lives in a world where arguments often result in physical escalation and where people defend their honor by violent means.

Please note that I personally do not believe Doug deserves to be murdered for mouthing off in public. But obviously Doug is throwing caution to the wind here, and he’s a blind idjit if he refuses to see the danger. When you argue with the way the world is, you may just find yourself bleeding profusely from a head wound. One can’t win against God’s design, which is why God cautions people to season their words with salt, and for pastors to be known for their good reputations.

And, naturally, me stating this publicly is in no way an endorsement of those who might interpret Doug’s tacit agreement as an invitation to enact upon him what he’s tacitly agreeing to. Doug is being foolish by mouthing off, but it would also be foolish for anyone to act on his mouthing off.

I’m currently in The Hague, the international seat of justice for war crimes in former Yugoslavia — which were not held in former Yugoslavia in part due to the fact that “concepts of law and justice are very confusing for people living under the influences of propaganda.” Years ago, some were pushing for the pope to answer in The Hague for the widespread cover-up of sexual abuse in the church. Why would a pope answer for crimes of this nature in a secular court instead of a church court? Because anytime one high-ranking person dictates how a private court operates, and can more or less control the flow of information to a court or tribunal, as well as decide the punishments meted out, that court or tribunal is bound to be skewed. This should be obvious.

That’s why we have secular courts of law in the first place, with established rules and established laws. That’s why, in the United States, if a prosecutor for one district or county is on trial, it’s rescinded to another district in the interest of court neutrality. If you’re being fair, you don’t want a man being “prosecuted” by his cronies.

I’ve been hearing a whole lot about why people should not discuss sex abuse cases and domestic abuse cases within the CREC. I’ve heard things like — in defense of Steven Sitler being sexually stimulated by his infant son — “every man can be sexually stimulated by a kid sitting on his lap or being in the same room, so what’s the big deal?” though this obviously does not speak well for the men this CREC woman knows. I’ve heard things like “Natalie just needs to accept that God wanted her to be sexually abused and figure out the lesson she needs to learn from this,” which makes God out to be a psychopath — no loving father says, “hey, daughter of mine, I’ve scheduled for you to be raped by an upstanding young man; I want you to think hard about the lessons I’m teaching you in doing this.”

I’ve heard things like “if you’re not a CREC member, or a member of a similar church in good standing, then what you say doesn’t matter anyway,” because, clearly, the definition of reality = if the person talking about it is a CREC member. At this point, I know the stories of close to a hundred people who have left the CREC because they experienced abuse within the church, or saw abuse within the church and were rebuked repeatedly for trying to speak up about it. Most of them are not willing to talk about their experiences yet, especially after witnessing how Natalie has been treated for talking. But that is beginning to change.

Once these people leave, they start paying attention to why they didn’t catch on sooner. The gender theology of the CREC is very telling in these circumstances. If, without the correct application of Christian contrition, as Doug Wilson claims, men tend to be violent rapists at heart (or gay, which is obviously worse), and women tend to be seducers of men (or gay, which is obviously worse), then why be surprised if there are a variety of abuse cases in the church? Why be surprised if women are battered a little bit by their husbands? Why bother treating that any differently than a disagreement about who washes the dishes?

The problem with this gender theology: non-Christian men (or all the ones I know) are kind, generous, and protective of women and children. I grew up thinking that the non-Christian world was a pretty dangerous place, but once I got into it, started traveling the world on my own, started talking to people on my own, I realized I was wrong. Without Christ, men are not just rapist pedophiles out to beat women up — so the answer to being a rapist pedophile or a wife beater is probably not “more Bible verses as told by your pastor.” There’s a lot more to it than that. Without Christianity, men can be, and are, amazing human beings. And, of course, many men within the CREC are as well. I know some — I know some really, really wonderful men and women who attend CREC churches.

But the nice people don’t change the fact that I know not-so-nice people who attend or attended CREC churches. I’ll be honest: all of the most pushy guys I’ve known personally — the kind who wouldn’t take “no” seriously, the kind who wouldn’t take repeated rebuffs seriously — attended CREC churches at some point or another. I’ve said this before, but the theology of the CREC enables men to be secure in a certain measure of asshole-ness — just look at the way their Presiding Minister talks about non-Christian women, about how men “dream of being rapists” and how women dream of being raped. Add to this that the theology of the CREC enables men to put part of the blame of their actions on other people — those unsubmissive wives, those seductive women, their negligent parents (see, for example, all of Doug Wilson’s responses about the nature of Jamin Wight’s crimes). Lastly, the theology of the CREC allows these men, in many, many, many cases that I guarantee most of CREC has never even heard of, to keep their crimes in-house, behind closed doors. Often, in spite of all of the Bible verses quoted to them, these men reoffend — particularly where they’re sent home with the wives they’re physically abusing.

Several years ago, my ex-husband admitted, on a recording, that he had abused the internal church process to his benefit and my detriment. He is a lawyer normally prone to litigious behavior, and he went to the churches — churches neither of us even attended with any regularity — instead of the courts because he knew that within the churches, he could get away with more. Here is the transcript, where K is me, and S is my ex-husband (off-topic: when you start transcribing conversations, you really notice how few complete sentences people speak):

K: OK… well, like, would you admit… that you, that you knowingly and deliberately manipulated the process of, like, church discipline?

S: Well, here’s what I would admit: when I say I manipulated it, in terms of, I sinned in the process, I used the process sinfully, but I wasn’t — during the process, like I would confess it, I would get angry…

K: But, here’s thing: you were doing research [to give to the pastors by hacking email and so on]. You were looking for anything and everything; you were setting everything up.

S: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah… I want to discuss how I abused the church process.

K: But the thing is, I don’t know how that can be prevented, because you were so good at it — that even though I was commenting on that [the unfairness of what was going on] to them [the pastors of the various churches involved], they totally disregarded it.

S: … Here’s an example. Had there been somebody … who — you didn’t have a well-placed advocate in the church system.

K: Yeah, I know. If I did, the people that I did have, you tried to take down, you tried to separate me from the people who would be on my side.

S: Right. That’s the whole point of having, that’s what happens in the criminal world; the reason that there’s a victim’s advocate is because there are very clever people that, that engineer witness testimony. All the time.

K: The process, like the church discipline process, is not nearly that structured. Like… it doesn’t have due process —

S: Here’s the thing, ‘cause this is, this is how I did it… I was only able to be effective because what I did, one of the first things I did is to make sure that the process was, I had Evan [Wilson] meet with Doug [Wilson]. Evan’s more intellectual process, he’s there but he’s slower, he’s much more — so then he met with Doug, Doug’s fast, systematic, procedural, judicial part of it, so when they partnered, they were, collectively — and then Jim [Wilson] got involved; it had the unity of all of them…

K: If somebody like you can do that, can manipulate —

S: I tell you the truth, to do what I did, I would imagine, is strikingly rare. To, uh, from the inside.

K: Yeah. Do you know how horrible that makes me feel? That I’m the one in a million person that got totally screwed over by the system?

S: But you knew.

K: And nobody believed me.

S: You knew I was positioned to do that, that I was capable —

K: No, I didn’t. I didn’t know you were that much of a jerk. I didn’t know you would use God to, to stomp on me.

Now, let it be known, if the church discipline process could get its act together and actually stop abuse (as in, immediately encourage battered or frightened women to leave their husbands, even if from a distance the elders think the abuse is “not that bad” and “they’ve seen worse”; immediately demand that any physical discipline of children err on the side of grace and caution; and immediately demand that sexual abusers be taken to jail after a secular trial in which “repentant” perps plead guilty to all of their crimes), that would be great. I’ve contributed to trying to get the harsh spanking present in various CREC churches addressed within the church internally.

Let’s see how it works out. Because I know that at this point, I am not the “one in a million” person who got screwed — even harassed — by a nebulous CREC church discipline process weighted in favor of those in higher positions of authority — men, seminarians, deacons, elders, and those related to them. I’m one of dozens if not hundreds worldwide. And if the church process doesn’t change, there will be hundreds more.

It is not persecution to demand that the smallest and weakest be given an equal voice, be sheltered from abusive men and abusive processes. It is persecution, and worse, to silence the least of these. Jesus saved his harshest words for church leaders who abused their authority; Jesus spoke kindly to women the rest of society despised. Not the other way around, as Doug Wilson and some of his followers appear to believe.

Whose side are you on in this matter: Jesus or Doug Wilson? Whose side are you on, the girl being beaten by her pastor father, or her father, because he recites pieties on Sunday? Whose side are you on, the wife being hurt by her husband, or the husband, because he smiles at you and shakes your hand in front of the congregation? If you choose no side, you chose by default, and these atrocities will continue to go on.

If you see a man punching a kid in a park, do you say “well, we don’t know the whole story here, and maybe the kid deserved it”? I sincerely hope not. And I sincerely hope that you see how not doing anything in this situation is, in fact, doing something and sending a very strong message to the kid being punched.

So my day job consists of managing a magazine about translation and cultural differences, including editing a host of articles written by people whose first language is not English. In these instances, it is very helpful to know how language works — the way French deals with certain idiomatic expressions that would not make sense translated literally, for example.

Over my years of editing, I also got pretty good at reading between the lines of a certain kind of person who was allergic to being wrong or to admitting to wrongdoing in writing — namely, lawyers. I edited my ex-husband’s legal briefs and memos, and I also dealt with the way he argued with me. His claim was, typically, that nothing existed unless it was written down. Because of this, he would insinuate things in writing but not state them explicitly — because that would get him in trouble.

My ex-husband received his education in debate from Doug Wilson, personally. And I’m strongly reminded of his style of discourse when I look over the things Doug has been writing. Although, credit where credit is due — my ex-husband, unlike Doug, would occasionally break down and admit he was wrong about something.

Doug’s letters to Natalie’s dad and to an investigating officer in the case of Natalie’s sexual abuse by Jamin Wight do just that: insinuate the opposite of what they’re explicitly stating. For example, in his letter to the investigating officer, he notes that Jamin has committed a crime, but he also claims that Jamin “is not a sexual predator” and, moreover, the only wrongdoing Doug mentions explicitly (aside from Jamin not living up to his duties as seminary student) is what Doug claims the parents did. In his letter to Natalie’s dad, he frames “protection” as the “protection” of not taking the case to trial — without ever explicitly saying so. And if you ask any number of the people who have interacted with Doug over matters of church concern, and subsequently left, the letters Doug wrote them were similar: unspecific, vaguely threatening and full of double-speak. There is a cloud of witnesses on this issue, and Doug’s still insisting they’ve all got it wrong, that they’re persecuting him with a pack of lies.

The thing is, I bet even his staunchest supporters would agree with me if they could shift their assumptions even a little bit. I encourage you who are, go back and re-read Doug’s communications imagining that Doug is someone else, from somewhere else other than your own culture — a Catholic priest or a Muslim cleric, for example.

However, Doug has been getting sloppy lately with his discourse and is actually going on record with things that are easily provable as false. What Doug has asserted in writing recently: that “it [the Jamin Wight/Natalie case] was a foolish parent-approved relationship, which led to statutory rape, as was shown in court.”

This is actually a lie, and here’s the proof, in writing. The court case did not show this; in fact, the court records stated that it was legally impossible to argue “consent” (by the victims or her parents) in this case given the age of the victim, and the “consent” of the parents never came into the court case either way — other than in what Doug himself wrote, and this notation by the court. So I find it ironic that Doug started this particular twitter conversation with a quote about truth. Here’s a link to the actual court documents, and if you are more up on courtspeak than Wilson appears to be, you’ll notice that the case ends in a plea deal where Wight pleads guilty — the case never even went to trial, so “the court,” by definition, never “showed” anything. Which Doug should know, since he sat in an adjacent room during the moderation.

Moreover, just because parents approve a courtship, that doesn’t mean courtship “leads” to statutory rape. Or is Doug actually arguing that it does? Is Doug actually arguing that two parents allowing one of his seminary students to be interested in someone — hold her hand, smile at her — “leads” to the kinds of grotesque things that Natalie describes on her blog, the kinds of things so vile that I don’t even want to think about them? If so, Doug should burn all the stuff on courtship he’s ever written. Because he can’t have it both ways. He can’t encourage parents to board his seminary students and college students, and encourage early marriage in his congregation, and encourage chaste getting to know one another under the eye of the parents, and then claim the parents were negligent because they followed his advice.

And for all of Doug’s recent private assertions to Natalie that she was so tall and mature and pretty at age 14 (you know, the really important things when looking at a sex abuse case), Natalie herself has said that her sex education consisted of her reading the dictionary at age 13. The rest of it, she said, she found out six months later when Jamin started abusing her. And this lack of sex education for females is entirely consistent with what the CREC teaches.

I’m not sure what tenuous “proof” Doug is holding on to in order to claim that there was a “secret courtship.” I don’t think he actually has any, other than his own faulty memory of something Natalie’s parents told him ten years ago, and which Jamin Wight spun to his own advantage. But I do know that when I shared his letter to the officer with Natalie (who had never seen it before), she was genuinely confused and horrified, as no such courtship had existed. Her reaction was not the reaction of someone who’d been holding back knowledge of some “secret courtship,” and as she pointed out, she would be the one to know, not Doug Wilson. Her family would be the ones to know, not Doug Wilson. You know, the family that nearly all left Christ Church after Natalie was treated so badly by the church in the wake of her abuse.

Doug has been using the “proof” he claimed he had as a threat to shut Natalie up, and actually wrote her a letter in which he the first thing he asks is “Did your mom hurt you or wrong you in some way that makes you want to get back at her like this? Is there something we don’t know? Are you aware that my central reason for not talking publicly about all this has been to protect your mom from accusations of parental negligence?” Translation: if you don’t stop talking about this, I’m going to have to try to vilify your mother publicly, even though, legally speaking, she had nothing to do with the case. So stop talking!

It’s important to note that, up until this point in time, Doug has been fighting tooth and nail to explain away why he felt the need to severely minimize Jamin’s crimes. And it’s relevant that Jamin, like Natalie has been telling anyone who would listen for the past ten years, was a violent, manipulative person, who, according to public court records, went on to throttle his now-ex-wife while she was holding their child.

But to Doug, everything Natalie is saying about Jamin is still untrue, because Natalie was tall at age 14, and because Doug has convinced himself that Natalie’s parents let Jamin show her affection. Doug wrote to Natalie a few days ago and told her, “what [Jamin] had done was very different from subsequent reconstructions that [you have] been periodically posting.” No hint of what, exactly, Natalie was supposedly lying about, except the “consent” thing — and Doug has claimed to Natalie repeatedly, that at least in a certain sense, she had consented to the “relationship” with Jamin.

Another thing Doug shared with Natalie a few days ago: “Though Jamin has been in possession of this entire set of facts through various Internet dust-ups (demonstrable facts which enabled him to show that his crimes did not include pedophilia), he has shown more respect for the feelings of others than have all the so-called ‘victim advocates’ in all our comment threads put together.” Translation: Jamin might have been a rapist and a wife-abuser, but at least he kept his mouth shut when I told him to, and that’s what really matters.

Now, Doug has recently indicated privately to Natalie that he was sorry about one thing — not finding a way around Natalie’s Dad to meet with her during the aftermath of her abuse (translation: it’s your Dad’s fault that you didn’t get the care from the church that you needed). But, in fact, he did meet with her then against her father’s wishes, and it was not an experience that resulted in anything but her feeling shamed and blamed for the abuse. Additionally, she was prodded for information about her father, as were other members of her family. Someone else recorded the conversation he had with Doug about this very thing:

Me: . . . did you meet with this girl alone in a room?

Wilson: Yes, for 15 minutes.

Me: So [Natalie’s father] gave you permission to meet with his little girl?

Wilson: Well, ah, no.

Me: Oh, I see.

Wilson: He did give me permission to counsel his family.

Me: Did he give you permission to interrogate his little girl?

Wilson: I did not interrogate; I met with her only to offer her encouragement during this hard time.

Me: Did you ask her if her father had made reference to Christ Church [Wilson’s congregation] as a “cult”?

Wilson: Yes, I did.

So there you have it — in Wilson’s accounts he gives of his actions versus what history actually shows, you have more posing, more wrangling, and no actual acknowledgement of cause and effect.

So what would the “internet mob,” as Doug is so charitably calling the people who want to see reform in the way the CREC handles abuse, like Doug to do in this instance?

First: we’d like to see him publicly retract his false statements that e.g. “it [the Jamin Wight/Natalie case] was a foolish parent-approved relationship, which led to statutory rape, as was shown in court.” And we mean actually retract — not pretend like those words mean something other than what they so clearly mean. Or that we all just misunderstand him.

Second, we’d like to see him demand that abusers pay restitution to their victims — all their victims, not just the ones they plea-bargain out for — in the form of, at the bare minimum, an acknowledgement that they abused the victims and that this will have lasting psychological consequences that will probably need professional psychological help. The more public the abuse, the more publicly it got hastened away into the shadows, the more public the restitution should be. In this case, Wilson himself is one of the abusers, since he used his power to silence the victim and insinuate, both privately and publicly, that she was lying, that her parents were to blame for her abuse, and that publicly calling for change within his denomination was an act of treason or war. Because Wilson said all this publicly, he should make his restitution public. He should make his retractions public.

But I would probably have a heart attack if Doug Wilson did either of these things. What we will likely see, instead, is what we’ve seen all along: more of the carefully-worded “my bad behavior was someone else’s fault,” more revising of clear historical statements in the vein of “see, when I said that Jamin was not a sexual predator, I actually meant that he was sexual predator — and it’s your fault if you couldn’t tell what I really meant,” or “I sneezed in Natalie’s direction once, and she didn’t take this as a sincere apology, so what are you going to do?”

Doug Wilson’s recent post reminds me of something he wrote back in 2013. So much so, that I pulled up a draft of what I was writing in response back then, and it basically matched word for word. I figure that if Doug can recycle his arguments ad nauseum, at least it gives me a chance to make good on stuff I didn’t publish two years ago.

His current post is about how non-Christian women really are mostly on the spectrum of whores and dykes, so it’s totally legit to “generalize” them as such because — wait for it — 50 Shades of Grey sold a lot of copies. The assumption here (quick lesson, in case Doug’s fans aren’t up on logic, but assumptions aren’t real proof) is that a. all these copies were sold to non-Christians; b. all the readers were women; and c. all the readers approved of the book. And when I say “all” I mean “all” in the way that Wilson appears to use it, which is “generally speaking, because I’m not going to bother being clear about this, since it’s more fun pretending I was clear in the first place and then mocking everyone who called me out on my BS.”

The post a few years ago similarly challenged us to consider the sexual double standard set forth by liberals, and was similarly used to sidestep the issue of his tendency to blame the victim in abuse scenarios. It appears from reading this post that Wilson sincerely believes feminists are staunch fans of 50 Shades of Grey and Lil’ Wayne, which is apparently hypocritical of them because they don’t like it when men tell women what to do.

So I’m wondering, based on these and many other posts like it: Does Wilson know any real feminists or real non-Christians, or is he still arguing based on some two-dimensional scarecrow he’s made up in his head? He seems very keen on letting us know how much people misunderstand his arguments, but he doesn’t waste his precious time actually trying to figure out the arguments of anyone who thinks he’s wrong.

In the post from two years ago, Doug urges us to compare 100 women who like him and follow his teachings and 100 women who don’t, in what he seems to believe is a good limitus test of happiness and safety: whether the women have been physically abused, been called “bitch” by a boyfriend or husband, or have read 50 Shades of Grey. He obviously believes the 100 women who follow his teachings would get better grades on this test.

So, Ok, I’m accepting the challenge. I know a fair amount of women who do like Wilson and a fair amount who don’t. Probably over 100 of each. I also know a fair amount who have abandoned his teachings (and teachings like them) precisely because they were abused in some way under those teachings. I’m not sure which category I’m supposed to put them in. Presumably, they’d go in the “don’t like Wilson” camp, although that’s obviously unfair; they don’t like Wilson because his theology enabled their abusers.

But still, for the sake of argument, let’s leave them out of it. I think we can safely say that the women who follow Wilson’s teachings won’t be reading 50 Shades of Grey, because according to Wilson, that’s a sign there’s something seriously wrong with you. To hear Wilson tell it, reading that book means you’re basically apostate. So, yes, Wilson, if they agree with you, they clearly won’t be reading that book. I believe this logical fallacy is called “circular reasoning,” if you care to keep track. Although, come to think of it, most of the Facebook posts I’ve seen mentioning 50 Shades over the years were made by people in Wilson’s camp — in the negative, obviously. I’m sure they read it twice just to make sure they disapproved.

However, of all the feminists I’ve discussed 50 Shades of Grey with, not a single one of them, male or female, was a fan. They’d read it, or at least started to, because they were curious what all the fuss was about. Because they don’t believe buying a book makes you apostate or anything. They said the book was degrading and insulting to women, that the female character was an idiot, that it was absurd, poorly written, and not erotic. I confess: I read it. I was in a hostel in London and it had been left behind by someone, and I had an evening to kill that I didn’t want to spend trying to get the best of the horrendous internet connection. I was not impressed. The book was mildly amusing, in the same way that horrible things that have somehow become popular are — Doug Wilson has jump-started his notoriety on this exact principle. I’m guessing the book became popular in part because it’s so easy to make fun of; everyone loves to hate it. And that’s kind of our cultural ethos right now. Not that Doug would know anything about that.

So on to the second part of the test: being called a “bitch” by your boyfriend or husband. Here I draw a blank, because this is not something I’ve ever asked anyone else or that anyone else (again, outside of the abused women formerly from Wilson’s circle) has ever volunteered. I have insider knowledge of myself and that’s it. However, if I consider my ex-husband, who was going to counseling with Wilson at the time of our divorce, compared to every other boyfriend I’ve ever had (none of whom were big Wilson fans) then sorry, Doug, you lose this one. Your camp is the only one that ever called me a bitch. Your camp is the only one who’s ever called me a lot of things, come to think of it.

The third test, that of physical abuse, is of course the most serious. I’m not sure what Wilson considers physical abuse, but I do know a few things that he thinks aren’t physical abuse, or at least weren’t abusive enough to merit much in the way of church correction. So I don’t think I know anyone who Wilson considers to have been actually physically abused, in his camp or out of it (as far as I know, he’s never stated publicly that anyone was). I do know that every single woman I know who I would say has been abused, however, was abused at the hands of a so-called Christian man who believed in traditional gender roles. More, the more dependent my friends have been on their boyfriends or husbands, and the more patriarchal their boyfriends, husbands, and broader community were, the more likely it was that they stayed in a bad situation.

That’s what feminists are trying to prevent, actually: the entrapment of the weak by the strong. In pop culture, feminists write parodies of Robin Thicke, beg Miley Cyrus to get a clue. In real life, they live, and they want other women to have the same opportunities. Because as much as feminists like community and supporting one another, in the end, they know those things can get pulled out from under you. So you’d better know how to survive on your own if you need to.

When I think of feminists, I think of my group of female friends in Sandpoint — all of them beautiful, in the way that the summer forests and the mountains of that region are beautiful — warm, in full bloom, adorned by the natural slant of the sunlight, strong, tireless, shaped by laughter and the glory of capability. We are designers, scientists, mothers, triathaletes, homeowners. We run businesses and clear trash from cliffs; we go rock climbing and skiing together; we trade clothes regularly because we are frugal and because we see where someone else would wear a thing with better grace. We are all close with our families, but we can all take care of ourselves solo. We are afraid of neither the future or the past. We do not suffer fools. We love deeply and selectively, because we, too, want happily ever after. We believe in sacrifice, but we also believe in standing up for ourselves. We believe we are human beings before we are women. We have differing opinions, strengths, and talents. We vote. We get paid at work. We love our work. Our work makes the world a better place. And this, Doug Wilson, is how you actually praise a group of people. You don’t praise a group of people by saying “they’re better than some really hideous people I could mention.” You also don’t claim that you’re being nice because you’re only nice to the people in your camp. Even the gentiles do as much.

Feminists want the world to be a safe and fair place for everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs, gender, level of attractiveness, or marital status. They don’t like patriarchy because it demands that women put themselves in a vulnerable position, suspending their own needs and safety in the hope that the man they’re under can provide for everything. And, of course, sometimes he can, and sometimes he’s wonderful. But certainly not always. Mind you, feminists are not adverse to being stay-at-home moms. They just don’t want to be required to be stay-at-home moms in order to be considered “real” women.

They just don’t want a woman to be required to submit against her better judgement. Because there lies the road to the kind of madness that Doug ends up defending.